Why is the Mass like baseball?
Let me say first off that there are many times when I find Mass routine and less than exciting. It’s not like going to a movie or reading a book. It’s not an entertainment. It’s more like……well, like playing in a...
Book review: “A Killing in the Hills” by Julia Keller
Julia Keller’s novel “A Killing in the Hills” is on a par with the best of James Lee Burke and P.D. James. It is a mystery story of high literary ambition and quality. Like her bestselling peers, Keller employs the mystery formula as vehicle...
Did Jesus have a wife?
Yes, yes, it may be a hoax of some sort. But I’m excited by the news that a small rectangular piece of papyrus, seemingly from the writings of early Christians, has come to light which includes the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’...
Book review: “Looking for the Possible Dance” by A. L. Kennedy
After an idyllic four days, the fight begins on the drive home. Margaret notices with delight that she and Colin have had such a restful time that they’ve forgotten to latch on their seatbelts. “It’s called being relaxed,” Colin says. “Some...
“Not always night”
I was at an archdiocesan meeting the other day, and the remarks of a prelate in attendance seemed to argue that the Catholic Church has a corner on Truth. I don’t think I buy that. Throughout my life, I’ve learned a lot from lots of people, many...
Book review: “Rocket Ship Galileo” By Robert A. Heinlein
It happened that, a week or so after the death of Neil Armstrong, I picked up this 1947 novel, and to say it’s quaint is an understatement. It’s sort of a lunar version of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show”...
Book review: “Millions” by Frank Cottrell Boyce
The final two sentences of “Millions” by Frank Cottrell Boyce are: Sometimes money can leave your hand and fall like water from a pipe onto the hot ground, and the dusty earth swallows it up and bursts into food and flowers for miles and miles...
Book review: “Eminent Victorians” By Lytton Strachey
Twenty years ago, a friend of mine, Steve Swanson, recommended Lytton Strachey’s “Eminent Victorians” as a classic in the field of biography — and a delightful read as well. I’ve owned a copy for nearly that long, but only now have come to make...
Book review: “The Life of Pi” By Yann Martel
I finished “The Life of Pi” by Yann Martel a couple days ago, and I’m still not sure how to take...
Book review: “The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson” By Robert Caro
On the final page of “The Passage of Power,” Robert Caro sums up the 604 pages that have come before with a single word. He calls Lyndon Baines Johnson...
It Wasn’t the Fort Dearborn Massacre
Fort Dearborn on the south bank of the Chicago RiverWhat happened two centuries ago on Aug. 15, 1812, on the Lake Michigan shore near what is now 18th Street has long been called the Fort Dearborn Massacre. But it wasn’t a massacre. It was a...
Dangerous Women
Back in the 1990s, I saw a movie, set in a big city, that focused on a small group of people who wore very distinctive uniforms. This group wasn’t carrying out its mission very well. The members of the group were portrayed in the film...
Book review: “Outliers: The Story of Success” By Malcolm Gladwell
I found “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell to be quick and entertaining to read — and ultimately dissatisfying. Part of it has to do with Gladwell’s glibness. And part with the sense he conveys of having discovered some inner...
Book review: “The Giant O’Brien” By Hilary Mantel
Midway through “The Giant O’Brien,” I was more than a little lost. I couldn’t quite figure out how to take Hilary Mantel’s tale of the 18th-century Irish giant Charles O’Brien who comes to London to exhibit his massiveness and make his fortune —...
Book review: “The Great War and Modern Memory” by Paul Fussell
Perhaps the best way to write about Paul Fussell’s 1975 masterpiece “The Great War and Modern Memory” would be to simply list willy-nilly some of the myriad insights, observations, facts, quotations and other interesting stuff that Fussell...
Book review: “Imagined Lives: Portraits of Unknown People” — Fictional character sketches by John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Julian Fellowes, Alexander McCall Smith, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton, Joanna Trollope and Minette Walters
Now, let’s take these characters and make a novel! Ooops! I’m afraid I’m jumping the gun a bit here. I should tell you first what I’m talking about — “Imagined Lives,” a wonderful hybrid of a book newly published by the National Portrait...
Being a work-in-progress in the post-college world
Hello, newly minted college graduate. How are you liking real life? Scary, right? Especially for a young adult. Gone are the days when a parent could make a decision for you. And you’ve got some big decisions to make. To start...
Book review: “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” By Isabel Wilkerson
The North wasn’t the Promised Land. Or was it? The North didn’t have Jim Crow laws written into the books to keep African-Americans down. But it did have James Crow, a term for the attitudes of white Northerners and their unions and government...
Book review: “Revolt in 2100” by Robert Heinlein
Initially, I wondered if, in 1953, Robert Heinlein had had the still-very-new state of Israel in mind when he published “Revolt in 2100,” a collection of two short stories and a novella. That’s because the novella “ ‘If This Goes On…,’ ” which...
Book review: “The Bear” by William Faulkner
“The Bear,” which was included in William Faulkner’s collection of seven fiction pieces in “Go Down, Moses” in 1942, has been called a short story. It’s also been labeled a novella. At 40,000 words or so, it is...